Reality Check: Why Nobody Believes What They’re Told About Start-Ups

Uncharted territory, by definition, is not “like” anything you know in your mapped world. As a result, it’s often hard to imagine what it’s really going to feel like to explore. Just ask any woman who’s gone through pregnancy, childbirth, and the first few weeks of parenthood. If it weren’t for the convenient factor that humans don’t remember pain particularly well, no kids would have siblings.
I still remember my friend Rick telling me, before hiking up an 18,000-foot mountain in the Himalayas, that every step above 16,000 feet was going to hurt. I nodded, hearing and comprehending the words. He even repeated them, just to make sure they’d sunk in. Yes, yes. It was going to hurt. But “going to hurt” didn’t begin to describe the desperate sensation of knives cutting through every muscle and every inch of my lungs, as I struggled for air while climbing a slippery, snow-covered ridge at 17,000 feet.
Why was I so surprised at the sensation and difficulty? I’d been warned. Was Rick not clear enough? No, he’d been very clear. Blunt, even. The trouble was, I had no point of reference about oxygen-deprivation pain at high altitudes. I couldn’t conceive of the sensation, because I’d never experienced anything even remotely similar.
As with mountain-climbing, so with entrepreneurship. Paul Graham, whose essays are listed in our Resources section on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, just published an essay called “What Startups Are Really Like.” Graham asked graduates of his “Startup School” to say what surprised them most when they got out in the real world to do a startup. The list the graduates provided wasn’t surprising to me … after three years of entrepreneurial effort, I agree thoroughly with all the points listed, from the importance of a good partner to it taking longer than you ever thought possible, to the fact that a startup effort, like a college thesis, insidiously but surely takes over your life.
The list didn’t surprise Graham, either. Especially because he’d covered all those points in the startup school. So why were his students “surprised” by what they encountered anyway? Because just like me on that mountain, they had no point of reference from which to understand. I at least had been self-employed as a writer for 17 years before taking on something a little more ambitious. So I knew how work could become the monster that ate your life, if there was nobody to tell you to go home on Friday night, and a paycheck … if one came at all … came only when the work was done. But most people, as Graham explains, have only a structured job as a reference point when they decide to go out on their own. So even if they’re told about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, they’re shocked when they actually encounter them.
If you’re already an experienced entrepreneur, the list and comments Graham presents will amuse you … both as a reminder of the early days, and because it came as such a surprise to the new entrepreneurs. If you’re contemplating a startup effort, all I can say is … everything on that list is absolutely true.
So how do you prepare for something you can’t imagine? Perhaps the only thing you can do is go into it with your catcher’s mitt at the ready, as I often say, expecting the unexpected. In mountain terms, be ready for pain, even if you can’t imagine exactly how that pain will feel. Keep Graham’s list handy so that when you bump into a new realization, you’ll at least be quicker to recognize it for what it is … a co-founder problem, a funder problem, a time-frame problem … and at least won’t wonder if you’re the only person in history to experience this kind of headache or problem. And keep telling yourself, as my sister often says after difficult learning experiences, “now you have knowledge.” That’s the reason second-time startups have a better success rate. Take notes, and step back and analyze what you’ve learned on a regular basis, so you can at least benefit from what you suffer through.
The good news? Nobody can tell you just how good self-determination, or success at something you love and believe in, really feels either. That, too, will come as a surprise.